Leave yourself six square meters
It is not easy to save up to 200 yuan. As a barber on the street, Liu Yili pays 10 yuan at a time, which means he has to give at least 20 people a haircut.
Sometimes, he will meet people who deliberately don't give money or give less money.
If there are 10 people patronizing his business a day, it is already a happy thing, but sometimes he can only wait for one or two customers, or even not open all day.
In March, on the day when the sandstorm was blowing in Beijing, he went out as usual and took the bus to the construction site. There was only one customer a day.
But Lewis still has to make it his goal.
The money earned from going out every day must be detained for basic living expenses, including rent, utilities, and living expenses. Once the remaining amount is 200 yuan, he will go to the Postal Savings Bank to remit it to the China Children’s and Teenagers’ Fund (hereinafter referred to as “China Children’s Fund”). Yes"), no cents will be left.
On the afternoon of April 15, when Liu Yi had a haircut at Liuliqiao, the sandstorm came.
The receipt of the remittance was pasted one by one on the notebook, which was put into a blue document bag, and accompanied Liu Yi through several rental houses in Beijing.
Today, the document bag is placed in a house less than 6 square meters in Dongwangzuo Village, Wangzuo Town, next to Beijing's West Sixth Ring Road.
After 18 years of drifting in the north, this 6-square-meter house contained all of Liu Yi's.
Putting a single bed and a small cabinet here will take up almost half of the space.
There were all kinds of clutter in the bed, which made it difficult for him to turn over at night.
Other than that, there is no furnishings here-there is no heating, let alone air conditioning.
An induction cooker or gas stove also costs money, and an electric pot is the only cooking utensil in the house.
After nightfall on March 25, Lewis put on his headlight and had a haircut on the side of the road.
There is nothing of value in the room, and what Liu Yi most treasures is the bulging blue document bag.
He put it on the bed as a pillow and slept together at night.
There are already 4 notebooks with the remittance receipt in the file bag.
After posting these, he used it for 17 years.
The staff at the Postal Savings Bank counter in Wangzuo Town, Fengtai District, Beijing saw him come to remit the money within three to five hours.
Pieces of 5 yuan and 10 yuan banknotes make up 200 yuan.
For many years, he has been using "address remittance" because the remittance method is outdated and rarely used by others, and the counter staff remembered him.
Apart from that, not much is known about him.
For a long time, China UNICEF did not know what kind of person was behind the remittances, and how he collected all the remittances.
Until November 2020, China UNICEF suddenly received a call from Liu Yi for help.
For so many years, it was the first time that Liu Yi became seriously ill. He couldn't straighten up with backache, couldn't sleep, and "can't squat down even squatting in the toilet."
The day before the onset of the illness, he had just remitted money to the China UNICEF, and he only had more than 50 yuan on his body after the remittance.
He can't go out to get a haircut, and he has no money for medical expenses, living expenses, and rent due.
He didn't like to trouble others, that was the first time he felt helpless.
Wang Haijing, deputy secretary-general of the China Children’s Fund, told China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that after receiving the request for help, the foundation verified the status of Liu Yi’s donation.
In the donation records of UNICEF in China, the name of Liu Yi began to appear in July 2009, after which he has donated almost every month, and never stopped, the donation under this name reached 98,020 yuan.
In 2020, Liu Yi donated 8,600 yuan to China UNICEF.
Compared with the total of 421 million yuan in donations received by UNICEF this year, his donation was only 1/49 thousand of the total.
But in Wang Haijing's view, Liu Yi is a special case among the countless donors of UNICEF in China.
"It's trivial." Liu Yi always said that.
He was born in a village in Yuncheng, Shanxi, and later came to Xinjiang in response to the country’s call for the “Western Development” and moved his registered permanent residence to Qiquanhu Town, Turpan City.
He has a daughter who is a teacher and lives in Xinjiang with his long divorced wife. There is almost no contact between them.
In his hometown, his parents have passed away, and now he is helpless and alone.
After breakfast every day, the 58-year-old went out to get a haircut, and brought steamed buns and pickles.
When he got home in the evening, he went to the supermarket to buy reduced-price vegetables.
The money earned from going out every day is kept for the needs of life, and the 200 yuan will be remitted.
He hasn't been sick for many years, so he didn't even think about saving himself some medical expenses.
Wang Haijing told reporters that the foundation held a special meeting to discuss Liu Yi's donation and decided not to accept his remittance for the time being, and asked the staff to go to Liu Yi's residence to communicate the matter in person.
At the same time, they decided to fundraise with love throughout the foundation and donated 6,900 yuan in half a day.
On the afternoon of the fundraising, the money was sent to Liu Yi's rental house, including his 8,600 yuan donation in 2020, a total of 15,500 yuan.
That rental house is far away from the center of Beijing, and the bus takes 30 minutes to get to the nearest subway station, the westernmost station of Line 14, Zhangguozhuang Station, which is more than 30 kilometers away from Tiananmen Square.
Liu Yi came here for the cheap rent.
When I first moved in in 2009, the monthly rent was 150 yuan, and now it is 300 yuan.
This is the corner, cheapest and smallest room in a large courtyard in Dongwangzuo Village.
When the staff of the China UNICEF came to visit, he had to take them to sit in the courtyard and chat.
For many years, there has been almost no visits to that rental house.
The neighbors in the same hospital are not familiar with him. They have lived together for more than a year without saying a word.
He always lives here alone, eating alone, sleeping alone, taking medicine and reading books alone.
He originally owned his own home and house.
But in his hometown in Shanxi, his adobe house was sold before his mother died.
He left a few thousand dollars for his mother to hold a funeral according to the customs of his hometown, and donated the remaining money.
In this rental house in a foreign land, the sun is blocked by the fence, and the sun does not come in all day long, and the house is filled with the smell of tide.
His three meals a day are simple, steaming two 6-corner white steamed buns, then pour salt, vinegar, and sesame oil on the sliced onion and cucumber slices to make a cold dish, and finally make a bowl of eggs with the boiling water when steaming the steamed bun Flower soup.
Almost all of a sudden, sometimes cucumbers are replaced with green peppers and noodles are substituted for steamed buns.
He has almost no expenses, and he does not save the money he saves, and remits it to the China UNICEF.
It is impossible to figure out how much money he has remitted in the past 17 years.
Because the remittance slips posted on those notebooks are not all.
Liu Yi told reporters that he started donating money in 2004. At first, he didn't think about keeping the remittance slip, throwing it away, tearing it up, and then staying after being reminded, but occasionally he still lost some. .
In some early remittances, he did not even use his real name.
On some of his remittance receipts, "Aixin" was written in the name column, and "Feng Xian" appeared later, which is a homonym of "love" and "dedication".
From October 2005 to July 2009, donations under the name of "Feng Xian" in the past accounts of UNICEF in China totaled 19,050 yuan.
Judging from the remittance list available for inquiry in the rental house, Liu Yi's remittances began on November 10, 2004, and the amounts ranged from 50 yuan to 100 yuan, 200 yuan, 400 yuan, and 1,000 yuan.
Over the past 17 years, the total number of donations on the money order has exceeded 120,000 yuan.
Liu Yi told reporters that the idea of donating money originated from a photo he saw in the newspaper. The girl’s big eyes in the photo left an extremely deep impression on him. As he recalled, he used his hands in front of his eyes. Two laps.
He didn't know that the name of the photo was "Big Eyes", which later became a classic photo of Project Hope.
All he thinks is that he "helps those children who can't afford to go to school as much as he can."
He always talks about "I don't have much culture".
Before he went to Xinjiang at the age of 35, he was an authentic farmer. He was the fifth in his home. When his father was old in the fifth grade of elementary school, he dropped out of school and went home to help his father work in agriculture and earn work points in exchange for food.
He later thought that if he continued to go to school, his life would be better than it is now. Some of his classmates would be admitted to university in the future, and later went to work at the provincial party committee of a certain province.
He came to work in Beijing from Xinjiang after SARS. He likes to watch the news. When he saw in another report in 2004, Cheng Shuqin, then Secretary-General of the China UNICEF, expressed his condolences to local schools. It was a long way to donate money. it has started.
In 2004, he began to donate to the "China Children and Teenagers' Fund" by means of "address remittance".
On those remittance slips, the beneficiary account never appeared, only the beneficiary name "Cheng Shuqin" and the beneficiary address "15 Jianguomennei Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing".
Wang Haijing told reporters that the donations from Liu Yi were “non-directed donations” and were “mainly used for children’s education and help for children in need”.
Occasionally, the names of other payees will appear on his money order.
During the Wuhan epidemic in 2020, he remitted 200 yuan to the "Hubei Wuhan Epidemic Prevention and Control Headquarters", with a message that read: Fight the epidemic.
The money was later returned, and he remitted it to the Hubei Provincial Charity Federation.
For many years, the postmarks recording the location of the remittance have appeared "Beijing West Railway Station", "Splendid Land", "Muxiyuan", etc. The remittance address on the remittance list also changes from time to time, sometimes it is No. 118 Lianhuachi East Road, sometimes it is Tiancun, Sijiqing Town. On the 1st, there were also No. 15 Maojiawan Hutong, No. 1 Guandimiao Road, Jiugong Town, and Jiujingzhuang Dahongmen. Later, Dongwangzuo Village appeared most frequently.
Every time the remittance address changes, it means that Lewis rents a house in a new place.
During the 18 years of drifting in Beijing, he distributed flyers at the entrance of supermarkets, cleaned up at Beijing West Railway Station, haunted various railway stations in Beijing, pulled bags for passengers, and sent jeans in three rounds at Dahongmen Clothing Wholesale Market. Xinfadi unloaded the vegetables from Shouguang.
On the most tiring day, I unloaded 50,000 catties of winter melon, earning 150 yuan.
For more than 10 years, this "no culture" old North drifter will slowly be eliminated by the times and time.
With the increase of express delivery companies, the work of pulling packages has become more and more difficult to do; as they get older, it has become difficult to deliver and unload vegetables; since the epidemic, the business of barbershops on the roadside has also been affected.
But the money donated to poor children was earned by him little by little.
He seldom talks about it unless he is in trouble.
For example, the city administrator or security guard who came forward to rush him to show his money order, hoping to win sympathy, but it is usually useless.
A neighbor in the same hospital accidentally heard about his donation last year.
This neighbor was a little puzzled: "You don't have money, so you can live your life first." Some people have persuaded Liu Yi, "You don't donate it, you can keep it for yourself." But he seems not at all. Don't care about the opinions of others.
In March of this year, he temporarily stopped donating to the China UNICEF, because he saw a report about a family with leukemia, he decided to donate 200 yuan to each of the four children with leukemia in the report.
Lewis said, "They are eager to spend money."
When the father of a child with leukemia knew that his donation was saved by going out every day for a haircut, he refused to accept it.
Liu Yi knows that for a leukemia family that spends millions of dollars at every turn, 200 yuan is just a drop in the bucket, and he has "limited ability", but he insists on donating.
He doesn't go out to earn money almost a day.
For a long time, he has never owned a barber shop of his own, and he has no fixed barber shop. He always moves around in the morning market, construction site, community, bus station, overpass and other places.
He purely believes in the slogan "If one party is in trouble, all parties support", he always thinks about "do a little bit of his heart" when he encounters something.
In the 18 years in Beijing, he has not visited anywhere except Chairman Mao Memorial Hall.
He told China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that when the Wenchuan earthquake occurred in 2008, he was ready to go, but found that the earthquake had damaged the traffic and the train could not arrive, so he gave up.
In April 2013, he learned of the Ya'an earthquake on the radio, and immediately bought a ticket to Lushan, the epicenter, and worked as a volunteer in the disaster area to help unload mineral water and relief tents.
On the night of July 14, 2020, he came to Jiangxinzhou Ferry in Jiujiang, Jiangxi.
At that time, southern China was mired in a flood second only to 1998, and Jiangxinzhou, a small island in the Yangtze River, was besieged by floods.
Liu Yi told a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that he saw the news that there was a shortage of people to fight floods, so he took a hard seat from Beijing West Railway Station for more than 15 hours and rushed to Jiujiang.
After inquiring all the way to the Jiangzhou Town Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, I was told that there is no shortage of manpower.
That night, he quietly returned to Beijing.
The one-way ticket from Beijing to Jiujiang was 163.5 yuan, and the landlord later learned that he borrowed the tolls.
In fact, his hairdressing business is not stable, and he is often forced to move his stalls by security and urban management, and sometimes he is robbed of haircutting tools.
In the more than 10 years in Beijing, he has donated 24 times of blood, each time it was 400 ml.
"I used to be in good health, but I can't do it anymore." Liu Yi said, he hasn't donated blood for a long time.
Now that he has been standing for haircuts for a long time, he has to sit down and rest for a while, and carry painkillers and medicine for his back disease with him.
He was diagnosed by doctors as "Lumbar osteoarthropathy, osteoporosis of the spine with pathological fracture".
This is a degenerative disease of the lumbar spine of people who have been engaged in manual labor for a long time.
Before it rained, he also went out of the stall, but now he has backache and can't get out of the door when it rains, so he has to stay in the rental house to recuperate, read a book, and take painkillers.
For more than 10 years, he watched the plum tree in the yard outside the rental house grow up little by little, from a small sapling to the trunk as thin as his thigh.
When spring comes, plum blossoms bloom and the fragrance overflows.
But he clearly felt that his body was aging and degenerating, his appetite was diminishing, and his organs were shrinking.
In the past, for heavy physical work, he used to eat 1 catty of pork meat and 10 steamed buns, but now he can only eat two steamed buns.
Probably because I have eaten pickles for a long time, my stomach is not as good as before. When I go out, I often grab a handful of peanuts and take it with me.
My eyes are changing, my hearing is declining, and my strength is worse than before.
When I was young, I was able to give a bag of rations to my shoulders, but now I feel heavy holding a bundle of 20 jin of flyers.
He is also a bit forgetful. Sometimes he goes out to get a haircut, and only when he walks to the bus stop he finds that some tools have been left at home.
After the waist fell ill, he became more concerned about time than ever, and he was anxious to go out to earn money.
When it got dark, he took out his headlamp from his handbag, hooped the lamp around his head like he went to a coal mine in Xinjiang 20 years ago, and continued to work.
"His age is constantly increasing. As he grows older, his ability to earn a living has decreased. If we accept such donations again, we will be uneasy." Wang Haijing said, "The suggestion is to do what we can."
However, the staff of China UNICEF found that Liu Yi had not listened to them, and in 2021 they received his 11,800 yuan remittance again.
Among them, 10,000 yuan was left over after Liu Yi's treatment of waist disease, and 1,800 yuan was earned from his haircut in the past year.
On April 7, UNICEF staff visited him in the rental house for the second time, returned the money, and again advised him to suspend donations.
But just the day before they arrived, a brand-new receipt of 200 yuan remittance to No. 15 Jianguomen Inner Street appeared in this rental house.
China Youth Daily · China Youth Daily reporter Li Qiangwen and photo Source: China Youth Daily